Bestselling Christian author,
activist, and scholar Tony Campolo and his son Bart, an avowed Humanist,
debate their spiritual differences and explore similarities involving
faith, belief, and hope that they share.

Over a Thanksgiving
dinner, fifty-year-old Bart Campolo announced to his Evangelical pastor
father, Tony Campolo, that after a lifetime immersed in the Christian
faith, he no longer believed in God. The revelation shook the Campolo
family dynamic and forced father and son to each reconsider his own
personal journey of faith—dual spiritual investigations into theology,
faith, and Humanism that eventually led Bart and Tony back to one
another.

In Why I Left, Why I Stayed, the Campolos
reflect on their individual spiritual odysseys and how they evolved when
their paths diverged. Tony, a renowned Christian teacher and pastor,
recounts his experience, from the initial heartbreak of discovering
Bart’s change in faith, to the subsequent healing he found in his own
self-examination, to his embracing of his son’s point of view. Bart, an
author and Humanist chaplain at the University of Southern California,
considers his faith journey from Progressive Christianity to Humanism,
revealing how it affected his outlook and transformed his relationship
with his father.

As Why I Left, Why I Stayed makes
clear, a painful schism between father and son that could have divided
them irreparably became instead an opening that offered each an
invaluable look not only at what separated them, but more importantly,
what they shared.